Touristy Tuesday

Tuesday was the first day that Mike and I were on our own without our local guides Tyler and Bella. Tyler had taken off on Monday to celebrate American president's day and my American birthday. We started our day with eggs and more thick-cut strip and Canadian bacon hybrid. We then set off for the CBD to see the sights by land that we had previously only taken in from the harbo(u)r.

Sydney has a delightful public transportation system. Perhaps it was just the contrast with DC's transit system, which has deteriorated in the last decade to the point that trips will randomly yet repeatedly take four times the normal length, trains only come every 25-30 minutes outside of rush hour (when they would routinely run every 6-8 minutes between the hours of 5 am and midnight or later in the early 2000s), and occasionally kills people with incompetence.

We were able to take a short bus ride to Bondi junction, where we caught a punctual, clean, and new-looking train a few stops to the CBD. Our destination for the morning was the Sydney Botanic Garden, situated on the site of the first garden planted by the convicts and crew of the "first fleet" that sought to colonize Australia some 200 years ago.

The garden offers a free walking tour at 10:30 every day. It turned out to be more of a moseying tour, as our guide and a few of our fellow tourists looked to be around 80 years old. Still, he had accumulated a vast amount of historical and horticultural knowledge during those decades, which he eagerly shared with us. We saw many plants and animals that are known only in Australia, as well as many that were brought over by Europeans for aesthetic or agricultural reasons. One of the most intriguing species to me was the strangling fig. This tree had developed an evolutionary hack to deal with the thick canopies of the Aussie forests, which blocked most of the light making it to the forest floor. To get around this, the fig produced seeds that were attractive to local birds, who would then deposit the seeds higher up in the canopy. The fig tree had the ability to start growing in open air, and send leaves up from the host tree top to collect sunlight. It would then send roots downward until it reached the ground, essentially standing on the original tree's shoulders to get some sunlight in its early days. It continues to send down roots around the host tree until it has completely smothered it, and eventually the host dies. It creates intriguing visuals where you can see the trunk of a dead or dying tree surrounded by the tentacle-like roots of the strangling fig.

Strangling Fig

I am familiar with these types of initiation rituals

Our intrepid guide

Interesting factoid: when the stone cutters would cut their stones at the quarry, they would mark it with their personal insignia to ensure they received the proper credit

Along the walk he pointed out a web with some kind of horrible-looking spider in the center of it, about the size of the palm of my hand. I missed the name of it, but I’m pretty sure this was my first up-close encounter with one of the many species of flora and fauna in this country that could kill me.

Deadly Fauna

The largest vertical garden in the southern hemisphere

Outside the Opera House

After the tour, we left the garden to head into the CBD and meet Tyler for lunch. He took us to a nice Vietnamese joint and then a coffee shop. He also gave us a quick tour of his office. He works at a startup fintech company, and his office very much had that internet startup vibe to it. Huge Apple monitors at the workstations in an open-floor layout. Giant bean-bag chairs for the meeting room. Cool artwork on the walls.

After our office tour we set out to explore the Rocks, which was the sight of the earliest white settlements in Australia. There were some cool pubs and restaurants, but overall we didn't find much to do or see here. We stumbled upon "the big dig," which is an archaeological excavation display sight that preserves some of the foundations of the original stone houses built in Sydney. This was cool in theory, but just seeing the vague outline of what used to be a wall and a few informational signs about what random former convict and family that lived there was not all that exciting.

We moved on to the Opera House, and took a lap around the structure to check it out from close-up. The only way to get inside was via a $35 tour, which we decided to forgo, as it was getting late in the day and the line looked to be mobbed by Chinese tourists wielding video cameras. We cut back through the botanic gardens to our next destination, the parliament house of New South Wales.

Celebrating the Year of the Dog

CNY Sydney 2018

After a very limited screening procedure, we were allowed to enter and headed right onto the floor of the upper house chamber. Parliament was not currently in session, so we were able to have a look around on our own. We also checked out the Jubilee Reading Room, which was decked out with old books and large globes. 

In the upper house

Sweet globe in the Jubilee Reading Room

We then headed to the lower house chamber, and had to wait to enter until a German tour group had left. Once they had, we were treated to a private tour by one of the guard/guides. Learning that we were Americans, after joking that we wouldn't be allowed in because of this, he handed us an informational sheet breaking down the differences between the government systems of our two countries. Australia has a federal system of state and national governments, like the United States. But the structure of each of those governments is more akin to the British parliamentary system, with a prime minister at the head. The states do have governors, but they are representatives of the British monarchy and are largely ceremonial in purpose now.

In the seat of power

Power Sharing

The lower house. Akin to our House of Representatives

After we concluded at the parliament house, we caught the train back and met Tyler at his flat. We quickly cooked up dinner and headed to the Bondi Bowls Club for some lawn bowling.

Lawn bowling is very similar to bocce, which is why I was so intrigued. I majored in bocce at the University of Miami, with a minor in business administration. I continue to play in a weekly bocce league 3 seasons out of the year in DC. Suffice it to say, I’m a fan of the sport. For those who aren't familiar with the game, bocce is played by throwing a golf-ball sized "palina" down a roughly shuffleboard-sized court, which then becomes the target. The teams then take turns tossing heavy, quarter-bowling-ball-sized balls at the target ball. Closest to the palina wins the round. If you’ve been watching curling in the winter Olympics, it’s basically the same thing except on grass, and with a moving target.

Lawn bowls works the same way, but has the added twist that the balls are weighted on one side. This gives their path a curvature once tossed, adding a whole new element to the game. It definitely took some getting used to, but eventually I felt like I got the hang of it. The biggest hurdle for me was not the unbalanced weighting of the balls, but the unbalanced weighting of the bowler (i.e. me). Lawn bowling is required to be played barefoot, which I fancied, as I much prefer that to any other foot-state. To protect player's feet, there was a rule against bringing glass onto the court with you. Why they chose to serve beers in glass drinkware with this rule in place is beyond me, but the net result is that you had to bowl with your left hand unnaturally empty. Drinking and bowling in bocce is such an inseparable aspect of sport that I had no idea what to do with my idle hand. Bowling without tipping over due to the lack of an anchor-beer took some practice to get a feel for.

Shooters shoot

Once it got dark we headed inside, where bar trivia was underway. We had already missed the first round, but upon hearing the questions and answers, we decided we needed to school these fools. We entered the "comp," as Aussies call a competition, and managed to climb our way to a 3rd-place finish, despite not having garnered any points in the first round. Granted, there were only 5 other teams competing, but the finish was good enough to win thirty dollars worth of vouchers for our next visit to the Bondi Bowls Club. Elated by our domination of the later rounds, we split a couple more pitchers between us and called it a night.

Coogee Strolling

[Editor’s note: these posts are going to start going up out of order in the interest of time. The post from Sunday requires some care and crafting to strike the literary notes that the subject matter deserves]

Monday:

the day started, as many days often do here, with a dip in the drink at Bondi. Actually, it started with breakfast at Tyler’s place. I’m fascinated by the bacon they have here. It really is the best of both worlds. They've got the strip bacon that we commonly know in America, but attached to that still is the leaner ham portion, what we generally call "Canadian bacon" in the states. They get both! And the strip portion is particularly hardy, definitely in "thick cut" territory by US standards. It's great.

Moving on from breakfast, we spent the morning at the beach. Being a weekday, it was decidedly less crowded than we had seen it all weekend. The surf was pretty tame, and we spent a while in the chilly water tossing a football around. Tyler explained that the surf was "dumping out" and thus wasn't ideal for surfing. The waves were breaking all at once along the line so there wasn't much of a roll to ride on.

After a while on the beach, we went to grab some beers at speedos, a nearby cafe. After all, it was past 5 o'clock back home, and we were still a bit on east coast time. We ordered a bucket of 4 coronas for $20, which was a pretty good price. Beer in Australia is crazy expensive. You can easily spend more than that for a six-pack at the grocery store. Restaurant prices here often gave me a bit of sticker shock, but it was unjustified. What needs to be kept in mind was that the exchange rate cuts 20% off the price when comparing it to us prices. You also don’t tip in Australia (at least, Tyler assured us this was the case but mike and I continued to worry that we were earning a spot alongside him in the "these guys never leave a tip" blacklist that we suspected gets circulated amongst the Bondi service workers). On top of the no tipping, there's no sales tax, vs. 10% in DC. So if you add up the 20% tip on top of the 10% sales tax, then factor in the .80 AUD/ 1 USD exchange rate, that's a substantial difference. You'd need to perform some form of advanced calculus to get the actual conversion ratio, but it's significant.

When the waitress looked a little stunned that we were only ordering a bucket of coronas at 11 am on a Monday, she explained that we would need to order food with the beer. This was not a restaurant policy, but apparently a requirement to comply with the responsible service laws (RSL). Similar laws are on the books in the states, but most places don't feel the need to rigorously enforce them. We asked the waitress for a few minutes to contemplate the food options.

A different waitress came back later to take our order. Mike, who wasn't drinking with us at the moment, ordered a side of hash browns and side sausage, for a total of $3, the cheapest food options on the menu. When our original waitress returned a few minutes after our order had arrived, she laughed at us, "that's the food you ordered with your beers?" looking down at mike's tiny plate of side dishes, while Tyler and I indulged in our coronas. We were indeed complying with the letter but certainly not the spirit of the law. We each took a bite of the hash browns to make sure we were in full compliance. She laughed again while pretending to smack Tyler for his smart-assity. In an important cultural note, they served the coronas with lemons rather than limes. Weird, but not altogether unrefreshing.

After that, we strolled about Bondi for a bit to get a feel for the neighbo(u)rhood. We eventually settled on "little l" for some chicken sandwiches. They were quite good.

With lunch concluded, we headed back to the flat to shower up and prepare ourselves for "the walk." the Bondi to Coogee beach walk is, as the name implies, a marked walk along the coast from Bondi beach to Coogee (pronounced like huggies but with a k and a slightly more boogie g sound). I was excited to finally put my camelback that I had purchased for this trip to good use. We donned our walking shoes and filled up our waters, as it was well hot out there.

Tyler lives on the northern end of Bondi beach, so the walk began by traversing the boardwalk above the beach to the southern end. At that end there's an establishment called Bondi Icebergs, which sports a saltwater pool that's so near to the water's edge that some of the larger waves would wash over the deck and mingle with the pool water. It looked like a cool place to do a few laps. We continued on along the coastline towards Bronte beach.

The Australian coastline is heaps different from, say, the Atlantic seaboard. On the east coast of the us you've essentially got miles and miles of nearly unbroken sandy beaches. At many places, you can look north or south and see nothing but more beach all the way to the horizon. This is not the case for the eastern shore of Australia, at least not the coast of new south wales where we were. The beaches are all in coves, surrounded on both sides by imposing cliff faces. This makes for dramatic views as the waves crash along the rocks or cruise in to the beach inlet. It also makes for a very taxing walk, as we would climb seemingly endless staircases or steep inclines, only to crest a hill and see a similar decline down to the next beach and hill to climb.


We stopped for photos at many of the cliff peaks, as the views were spectacular. Tyler played the tour guide along the way, breaking down the different vibes for each of the beaches we passed. This one has a small beach but great waves, so it's big for surfers. This one is so far in that it has a calm surf, so it's big for families with little kids. We passed one that had an underwater nature trail, the first of its kind. It consists of a heavy chain anchored in to the seafloor with concrete, forming a loop that goes past interesting marine habitats. It is intended to be enjoyed by snorkelers or scuba divers. I thought it was a pretty cool idea.

Finally, our legs wobbly from the exertion, our backs soaked with sweat, we spied our final destination: the Coogee pav (pavilion, for those who prefer using entire words). This was a pretty sweet bar with a relaxing rooftop overlooking the beach. The ground floor walls were bedecked with oversized games: tic-tac-toe, connect four, checkers, even a scrabble board. It definitely seemed like my kind of place. We had ourselves a couple of pints of local pale ale, and headed back to Bondi in an uber once the sun began to set.

To wrap up the night, we went to a Thai restaurant called Bangkok on Bondi’s main drag. The place was hopping, but we were able to get seated right away. This was a byob establishment (or byog- bring your own grog, according to the Australian language and culture book my sister got for me for the trip. Although I have yet to find an aussie or ex-pat that had ever heard the phrase or confirm its usage). They kept our beers refrigerated for us and brought them out as we needed, which was a very nice touch. A good time was had by all. We walked back to Tyler’s flat, and all slept soundly that night.

A 3 Hour Tour

So I made it to Sydney. The only hiccup left in the trip was trying to connect with my Uber without any cell phone service. Fortunately, there was free wi-fi in the airport, but that connectivity cut out once you ventured outside the terminal. I called the car from inside, but of course the uber "express pickup" location was a good 4-5 minute walk from the terminal exit. As I got to the pickup location, I looked desperately for the car that was supposed to pick me up, trying to spot it amongst the dozens of cars there to pick others up from their flights.

"Are you Dan Donnelly?" some guy stepped in front of me to ask. My Uber driver had actually gotten out of the car to track me down once he realized I had an American number and might not get his texts. Wow, we're not in Kansas anymore. Well actually, they might do that in Kansas.  But certainly not back in DC.

He gave me a nice ride to the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, whilst sprinkling in some interesting facts about the area as we drove through. I was struck by how much the architecture and general vibe reminded me of Coral Gables, Florida. We eventually made it to North Bondi, where I met my boy Tyler, his girlfriend Bella, and my travel companion Mike.

After heartfelt greetings and a quick tour of the flat, we bathing-suited up and headed straight to the beach for a dip. The only word that came to mind when we arrived was WOW. What a place. A beautiful beach, with beautiful weather, stocked with beautiful Sheilas. We dove into the surf which was, somewhat surprisingly, quite chilly. I assumed such a tropical locale would have nice warm water. But the Pacific is just generally cold, it seems. We did some body surfing, where I nearly lost my Ray Bans as the surf overtook me. Fortunately, the water is so clear that I was able to snag them back before they disappeared forever. Good luck trying to do the same thing anywhere on the Atlantic seaboard. Those sunnys would be gone the minute they left my face.

After our quick dip, we dried off and headed back to the flat. We had a big day ahead of us still. Tonight was the Boaty Party. Tyler, per usual, was in charge of virtually everything. He was maintaining the guest list, which needed to be strictly enforced due to the 90-person limit on the boat that was chartered. He also was in charge of supplying the salad, the sausages, some beer, the ice, decorations, and champagne.

Decorations had already been procured before I arrived. Same with acquiring 90 wristbands, which were intended for access-control purposes. On our way back from Bondi, we stopped at the "Wooly," (Woolworth's, for those who don't arbitrarily abrev everything) to pick up the food. To accompany the sausages, we picked up a few loaves of bread. I assumed this was a cost-cutting method, as buying sufficient buns to accompany the 125 sausages we were buying would be fairly expensive. I would later learn that this is in fact the preferred way that Aussies eat their meat at a "sausage sizzle."

We got back to the flat to gather the rest of the supplies and get dressed. Tyler and I both donned our captains hats that we had each independently decided to wear because look at us, look at us, we are the captains now. We called an Uber and did a double-check that we had all of the supplies ready by the door. Once he arrived, we filled our hands but still each needed a trip or two to get everything into the trunk, which was already nearly full. I was starting to feel bad for our driver already. We all piled into the car, and Tyler informed our driver that we needed to make a few quick stops before we got to the wharf, our final destination. First stop: The quicky shop for some ice. This stop was relatively fast, Mike and I hopped out to help carry the ice bags while Bella stayed in the car.

Next stop: The bottle-o, for a case of champagne and some beer. We all hopped out, Mike and I for the same pack-mule purposes and Bella to advise on the champagne purchase. Tyler picked out some local brews for us (News flash: Fosters is neither Australian for beer nor particularly well-regarded by Australians). Bella and Tyler then went to go figure out which was the best bubbly for our budget. Just then, a thought occurred to me: We were kind of taking an excessively long time with this stop, and our Uber driver had his trunk full of all our party supplies with nobody left in the car to keep him from just leaving us.

I ran outside and, lo and behold, homey was gone. oh, shit. I ran back inside and told the crew. Oh, shits were exchanged all around. Giving our man the benefit of the doubt, Mike ran outside to see if he had just pulled off around the corner or something to park. The guy was nowhere to be found. Tyler tried to call him while paying for the booze while deflecting calls from frantic would-be party-goers trying to get on the boat last-minute. Even for the master planner, you could see the anxiety of the situation starting to take its toll. Why nobody else involved in this party could have handled any of these tasks was never made clear.

After the first call went to voicemail, Tyler finally reached the driver right as he was pulling back around. Apparently he had gone to circle the block since he was blocking traffic where he had been waiting for us. Phew. These Uber drivers down here are a different breed. We completed our purchases and piled back into the car, beer in our laps, for the rest of the ride to Rose Bay Wharf.

Tyler running the event like Tyler does

We got to the wharf and unloaded all of our supplies into a big pile by the docks. There was already a bit of a crowd gathered. The boat was going to be about twenty minutes late, which was actually a good thing, since half the party people were running late as well. Tyler's phone kept blowing up with desperate texts imploring us not to let the boat leave without them. Once we were unloaded, Tyler went into full-on Tyler Social Chair mode. He had a list of 90 people on his phone, and was checking off names and handing out wristbands. He called over one of his friends and told him that he was in charge of security, and nobody was to get on the boat without a wristband. As people approached, Tyler introduced us and I had about 30 versions of basically the same conversation.

"You just get in this morning?"

"This afternoon. Our flights got all crazy, but now we're finally here."

"You well jet-lagged then?"

"Not feeling too bad at the moment, but I have a feeling we're going to both hit a wall and keel over at some point tonight. Hopefully just not off the side of the boat."

"Haha, well you're going to love it here."

The famous Ferry McFerryFace

And love it I did. It was an absolutely beautiful day to be out on the water. We cruised out into the harbo(u)r, really taking in Sydney the way it was meant to be seen. Tyler passed out the decorations, and a dedicated group set about hanging streamers throughout the cabin. Somebody took one of the "Happy Birthday" streamers and draped it about me like a sash, just so everybody would know I was the American birthday boy. I eventually had to ditch the sash when I went above deck and the wind loosened it to the point that my now half-sash half-tail was whipping around and slapping people in the face.

Somebody grabbed the aux cable, another couple of folks fired up the grill, and the party was on. We cruised past the opera house and under the harbo(u)r bridge. Many beers were drank, and sausages consumed. I found out I rather liked the Aussie method of bread-wrapping the sausages. A hot dog bun really isn't the ideal sausage wrapper, since the heavy curvature means that half the sausage isn't staying in the bun. The bread-wrap method (with the sausage laid across the bread diagonally corner to corner) accepts this fact, and gives you a nice little grip in the middle.

It's all about the U

Maintaining your sea legs while jet lagged and several beers in is not always easy. But I managed to stay on my feet throughout the night, which not everyone could claim. One girl decided to take a little nap amid the blaring music downstairs, and curled up on a bench with an inflatable saxophone decoration as a pillow. I realized that a boat is the one place in the world that ladies have the advantage when peeing. Trying to hit a trough while standing on a rocking boat is not easily accomplished, even while sober.

The night went on, and we got to see a spectacular sunset through the bridge and behind the skyscrapers of the CBD (Central Business District. i.e.- downtown). Eventually, the cruise wrapped up and we pulled into Darling Harbo(u)r to alight. With virtually no warning (or perhaps we just kind of missed their repeated warnings amidst our drunken revelry) we were told we had only 5 minutes at the dock and we all needed to get off the boat now. Everybody started scrambling to find their belongings, which were generally scattered about the cabin. Progress was slow.

At the two-minute mark, the crew just started screaming at us. GET OFF THE BLOODY BOAT NOW! There was a mad dash to grab anything drinkable left in the cooler, and we disembarked. Drunk, giddy, full of grilled sausages, and clutching a couple of six-packs of beer, we decided we should call it a night. All three boys passed out in the back seat of the Uber on the way back to Bondi.

Unexpected Auckland

So I find myself on a flight to Auckland, New Zealand. This was, as the title of this post implies, not what I expected.

When I started planning this trip to Australia, the thought crossed my mind that maybe I should check out New Zealand while I'm in that neck of the woods. I've always heard it was a pretty cool place. So when I was checking in for my flight this afternoon, and I found out there was one seat open on the flight to AKL, I leapt at the chance to do a layover in Middle Earth. I changed my itinerary right there on the spot, even rerouting my stateside layover from Houston to San Francisco in the process. A bit of a bold move, I'll admit. But sometimes you gotta just carpe the opportunities you get in life, right?

Except, that's not exactly how this all went down. My impromptu trip to the land of Zea was prompted not by my own whimsy but rather by a quick whipsawing of fortunes for both me and my travel companion, Mike.

The day started off smoothly, with a last minute check of my packing list (yeah mom, I actually made a list) before heading off to put in a half day at work. My flight was leaving from National at 4:30, which was a convenient 10-minute Uber from my office. I planned to work until 2:30 or so before heading to the airport. Plenty of time, even with a bag to check.

The first hiccup came in the form of a text message from United that our flight had been delayed 25 minutes. We already had a bit of a tight turnaround of a little over an hour planned for our layover in Houston. Now it was looking more like 45 minutes. I hopped on the George Bush Intercontinental Airport website (sidebar: I imagine most international airports are intercontinental as well - nobody's putting up an international airport just to get in a couple of flights to Canada. What makes Houston feel like they need to point this out?) to try and see how far it was from our arrival gate to the international terminal. Fortunately, it turns out the intercontinental has a skytrain that connects the terminals, running every 2.5 minutes and taking approximately 4 minutes to go between our terminals. Brilliant.

"gonna be a fuckin mad dash in Houston" Mike texts me, with a screenshot of the delay text he also received from United.

"yeah we Gucci though" I responded, with a picture of my laptop screen showing the results of my research.

I took the delay as an opportunity to wrap up a few more things at work, then headed to the airport. It was a gorgeous day in DC, particularly for mid-February: seventy degrees and sunny, which was twenty or thirty degrees above the highs of earlier in the week. I thoroughly enjoyed the brief cruise down the George Washington parkway, relaxing but also getting very excited to finally be setting off on the journey that I've been looking forward to for months now.

I got to the airport and strolled up to the automated check-in counter. I dipped my credit card in to the reader, but, alas, there was no response. I scanned my passport in its respective reader and it acknowledged the scan but still, no response from the kiosk. I pulled out my phone, searched my emails, and found my confirmation number, which finally was sufficient to pull up my reservation. I went clicking through the prompts until I got to the flight summary page. The takeoff time for the first leg was crossed out in red and replaced with the later departure time. But it was accompanied by a message in big bold red letters across the top. I don't recall exactly what words were used, but what it conveyed was something along the lines of "you're well fucked now, mate."

I glanced back at the departure time and realized that our flight was now delayed two and a half hours, ensuring that we would miss our connecting flight to Sydney. I was directed to get in a line behind a few other poor souls who were presumably in the same boat. Mike texted that he was doing the same with a gate agent, as he had already gone through security. At this point I was still not overly concerned about us making it to Australia. While I assumed flights to Sydney were probably not an hourly occurrence, I was sure they would be able to get us on the next one in a few hours or something like that. Just another mild annoyance to deal with.

Mike and I texted back and forth with updates on our progress through our respective lines. which was, for both of us, not very fast. Right as I finally get to the front of the line and am waiting for the next desk agent to open up, a guy about my age races in a huff to the baggage drop-off scale directly in front of me. He shouts at the nearest agent, "I called United yesterday and they told me I wouldn’t need a bag!"

"Sir, you can't check that without a bag"

"They told me I didn't need to have a bag!"

"Sir, TSA needs to be able to open it to inspect it, then how are they going to put that back together?"

The package that he had propped up against the counter and was wildly gesticulating towards appeared to be roughly the size and shape of a snowboard. It was draped in a layer or two of beach and bath towels in assorted colors. The towels were held in place by a tightly wrapped skin consisting of saran-wrap secured by a haphazard application of liberal amounts of duct tape. The agent that he'd been yelling at picked up the phone to call for backup, or perhaps just to avoid needing to speak to this man any further. I texted Mike to fill him in on this latest development. He responds with 3 successive texts over the next couple of minutes:

"clown shit"

"ok at the desk now"

"lmao this lady is on the phone with someone asking about a snowboard"

So now this guy is impeding our progress on both fronts. The desk agents go back and forth for a bit, but it seems pretty clear he's not getting the snowboard on the plane. Eventually, the situation is resolved when he offers to have a friend come pick up the snowboard so he can get on his flight. Guess you'll be renting some equipment when you get to J-hole, buddy.

The successful resolution of the Snowboard Crisis meant Mike and I arrived at our respective desk agents at roughly the same time. We continued our text correspondence, which mostly confirmed we were getting the same info from our agents as they looked for alternative itineraries for us.

"Where are you headed?"

"Sydney, please"

"Let me see what I can do"

**Types furiously at his keyboard while staring intently down at the screen**

[Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]

"Hmmmm....I can get you on the same flight to Houston and then Sydney tomorrow. get you in to Sydney by 6:30 am Sunday morning"

Well that simply would not do. Part of the impetus for doing this trip now is that I'll be turning 30 on Sunday. To mark the occasion, and not for any other reason, my boy Tyler and one of his Aussie friends booked a massive boat for a harbo[u]r party. They invited 40 of their friends just to celebrate my birthday. This "boaty party," as they called it, was definitely not something that they'd had plans to do for weeks beforehand that just happened to fall fortuitously on the first day of our trip and the Saturday night before my birthday. Bottom line, there was a boaty party being held in my honor halfway around the world, and I'll be damned if I was going to miss it for some United airlines bullshit.

"Do you have anything else?"

"let me check"

[Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]

"hmmmmm.....I can put you on a flight to LAX tonight, then connect you through Honolulu and Tokyo to arrive in Sydney at 2pm two days later"

“Two days later as in Saturday?” I asked, optimistically. This exchange took place on Thursday afternoon, mind you.  As I write this, I have no idea what day it is where I am, or back home, or in Australia. It’s sometime late week or early weekend.

“No, 2pm Sunday”

“So is there anything that could get me there on Saturday? I have a very important event I’m flying out to attend”

“Let’s see”

[Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]

“It doesn’t appear so”

Just then I recalled that Mike had texted me while we were in line that he saw a flight out of Dulles that connected through San Francisco to Sydney.  I proposed that to my guy.

[Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]

“There is room on the flight out of Dulles”

[Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]

“And the flight from San Francisco tonight is….”

[Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]

“Completely booked, I’m afraid. It looks like your only options are all going out tomorrow”

“You double-book flights all the time.  You can’t just, kind of, slide me in there? It’s not my fault that your plane never showed up in DC”

“We can’t do that. It’s very icy in Chicago, which is what delayed the plane. Nothing we can do about it.”

Despair began to set in. I was going to miss the boaty party. This sucks. But I had one last suggestion to try.

“Is there anything available on one of your partner airlines?”

“Hmmmm….Let’s have a look”

[Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]

…….

[Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]

…….

[Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]

“hmmmm…..”

[Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]

[Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]

[Clikk-clack-clickety-clack-clack-clickety]

**Typing increases in pace and intensity**

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“There may be one option, if you’re willing to travel without your friend. It looks like there’s one seat available to fly to San Francisco tonight, then a quick turnaround to a flight to Auckland, then on to Sydney getting you there at 1pm Saturday”

“Done, let’s do that.”  Sorry, Mike.  The Boaty Party beckons. The agent starts booking me through, right as Mike called me. Explaining to him that I had found a path to victory, but there was no room for him, was not much fun. But I persuaded him to join me on the SFO flight out of Dulles. At the very least, he’d be cutting United Airlines out of the equation as to whether he would make the next Sydney flight tomorrow.

We quickly called an Uber, as rush hour was beginning to descend upon the district and travelling out to Northern Virginia after 4pm can be hell on earth. We raced to Dulles, and got there with plenty of time. Mike tried again to work with the desk agent to find a way to get to Sydney by Saturday. No luck. In fact, she expressed sincere doubt that even I would be able to make the turn at SFO. So we both were looking at a likely overnight in the Bay Area and the prospect of “catching a miss” (Aussie slang term that makes no sense) on the boaty party.  Disheartened, we went through security and lined up to board the plane. Knowing that I would likely have to sprint from the gate as soon as we landed, I bid farewell to Mike saying I’d see him in “Sydney, San Francisco, or somewhere in between.”

Fortunately for me, the flight to San Fran landed ahead of schedule. I took off for the International terminal at a brisk pace.  Mike managed to catch up with me along the way.  He had wisely added himself to the standby list for the 11:00 flight to Sydney, and was headed to check on his prospects. We parted ways again as I split off to board my plane. We wished each other good luck and Godspeed.

As I successfully boarded my flight for New Zealand, I realized that the worst part of this whole fiasco (for me) was that my oh-so-clutch-booked-3-months-in-advance-and-didn’t-even-have-to-pay-extra-for-it exit row aisle seat with virtually unlimited leg room and easy access to the head and no risk of somebody waking me to get out to pee was now gone. I was back in full-on steerage with the rest of the peasants. Let’s see how well my bum knee feels after 13 ½ hours of this.

Just before I put my phone into airplane mode, a bit of great news comes through from Mike.

“I got on”

Cheers, mate! Mike was making it to the boaty as well. After all this, he was getting a direct flight to Sydney and arriving 4 hours before me. I wouldn’t trade him those 6 hours of uncertainty before he found that out, though.

Provided we encounter no more significant “hiccups,” we’ll all be in the harbor by nightfall Saturday (is that tomorrow? Later today? Next week? It’s unclear). So there ya go.